Those who have seen Douglas Moore's opera The Ballad of Baby Doe
- and few devotees of American opera have not-will quickly recall
the old turn-of-the-century prints that are projected onto a screen
for entre-scene atmosphere. If these scenes, which have become traditional
in Baby Doe productions across the country, bring to mind
an old wild west melodrama, consider the reference appropriate: the
history of this opera is a lively and sometimes perilous one.

The story of Baby Doe first came to Douglas Moore's attention in 1935,
during the ninth year of his long association with the Department
of Music at Columbia University. On March 8 of that year he read in
the New York Times an article, "Widow of Tabor freezes
in shack; famed belle dies at 73 alone and penniless, guarding old
Leadville bonanza mine." The article recounted the glamorous,
tragic tale of Baby Doe Tabor, whose marriage to Horace Tabor, the
Colorado silver baron, had delighted and scandalized the nation. A
photograph appeared with the article showing "Elizabeth (Baby
Doe Taylor[sic]) at the height of her famed beauty and social career."
(Interestingly, this account parallels the scenario of the opera that
was ultimately written. The headline, in fact, forms the basis for
the opera's concluding scene.)

The inherent poignancy of the story greatly appealed to Moore who
immediately sensed its appropriateness as an operatic subject. However,
the Baby Doe project was destined not to be an easy one:
twenty years would pass and Moore would write four other operas before
the idea would become reality.

The first peril to the Baby Doe opera was lyricist trouble,
which proved to be an unending peril. Moore first approached his friend
Pearson Underwood with the idea of turning the Colorado legend into
an opera. Underwood had poetic talents but lacked a strong dramatic
sense. The project went nowhere.

In the early 1950's a second attempt with Pulitzer Prize winning playwright
Paul Green was a disaster. (Yet through this association Moore's opera
came to have its premiere at the Central City Opera House in Colorado.)
Prior to meeting Moore, Paul Green had been in correspondence with
the Central City Opera Association which sought to have an opera written
and performed in celebration of its centennial [sic]. Green himself
had previous interest in the legend, and had written a movie in Hollywood,
Silver Dollar,
which dealt with Baby Doe's profligate daughter[sic].*

A mutual friend, Donald Oenslaeger, who ultimately designed the settings
for the opera, brought Moore and the playwright together. From the
outset the two men were incompatible in both personality and artistic
aims, Green said, "I had gotten a lot of material together, and
[Donald Oenslaeger] thought we could hit it off…I was more interested
in a drama, Moore in an opera. I was interested in a play for which
drama would be accompanied by music-he was interested in an opera.
I wasn't interested in a thirty page libretto. I wanted something
closer to Kurt Weill's Johnny Johnson. Moore played Giants
in the Earth, and that was interesting, but it was drama I was
interested in. Moore has the modern idiom and never does seem to climb,
seems to 'gravel' along."
Moore, on the other hand, remarked, "I admired Paul Green very
much in [his libretto for] Johnny Johnson. I thought it was
wonderful, and I was thrilled at the idea of working with him. But
when he sent me an outline of the first scene, it was just awful.
And I showed it to John Latouche who had been wanting to do something
with me, and he said, 'This sounds as if it were translated from a
foreign language.'"

Moore found the partnership intolerable. He said, "You see, I
torpedoed the project… I couldn't work with him….Paul
Green and I had outlined a story and when we separated we agreed-he
was very kind-he said, 'Let's each of us take this to have it any
way we want…' Then it was subsequently commissioned by the Koussevitzsky
Foundation and I was free to get my own librettist."

The libretto for Baby Doe was ultimately written by playwright-lyricist,
John Latouche, among the most gifted and the only professional of
Moore's several librettists. Latouche's professional credits in the
theatre began early with contributions to the 1937 revue, Pins
and Needles, and included the imaginative, iconoclastic musical
play, The Golden Apple, which won the New York Drama Circle
Award for best musical 1953-54.

But Latouche was a rose that came with thorns. In his work habits
he was the opposite of Douglas Moore. Whereas the composer was a highly
disciplined artist, working regularly, with consistent hours and habits,
the lyricist was erratic and unpredictable, producing in bursts and
fits. On his visits to Salt Meadow, the Moore country residence on
Long Island, Latouche could be heard pottering away downstairs late
at night long after the other guests hard retired. When he worked,
he worked quickly, frequently with brilliant results, and to any problem
had half a dozen solutions easily-the difficulty was in pinning him
down.

Moore said, "In The Ballad of Baby Doe it was a funny
arrangement. Latouche was always disappearing. He was always busy.
He was doing something for Carol Channing [The Vamp] and
something for Leonard Bernstein [Candide] and so I was so
excited that I would go ahead and write [the words].

"Because John was always involved in so many things, it was hard
to get hold of him and he would come down here [to Salt Meadow] and
we would imprison him and say, 'Now you can't have a cocktail until
you get that scene finished.' He would work very fast and very well.
And the tragic thing was that last scene which was difficult to do.
He was bringing it up to the Institute [of Arts and Letters] to the
Ceremonial to deliver it to me and left it in the taxi and he had
to do it all over again. But I suppose it was even better the second
time. But with John you could never tell what you were going to have…"

Work began on the vocal score in June 1954 and with it Douglas Moore's
twenty year flirtation with Baby Doe became a love affair. Effie Moore,
his sister in law, commented on this period in his life: "We
all laughed at him! It was as if he were living in a dream all of
that time, and we all…said he was in love with Baby Doe and
paid no attention [to us], and if you asked him a question usually
he hadn't heard. He seemed to be in a dream world-that was our deduction
- that he was having a love affair with Baby Doe and had no use for
anybody in his family!"

But new perils arose. The Central City Opera Association which had
originally commissioned the work, feared legal difficulties with Paul
Green (who admittedly had the first claim to the centennial offer)
and ceased cooperation with Moore and Latouche. As Douglas said, "We
were dropped like hotcakes."

The subsequent commission from the Koussevitzsky Foundation came through,
and for a time work proceeded smoothly. Then in April 1955, there
arrived at Columbia University a letter addressed to the Messrs. Moore
and Latouche from a Denver woman named Caroline Bancroft, author of
certain tourist trade booklets based on the Tabor-Baby Doe affair,
such as Silver Queen: The Fabulous Story of Baby Doe Tabor,
Augusta Tabor, Her Side of the Scandal, and Tabor's Matchless
Mine and Lusty Leadville. The letter fell like a bombshell upon
the opera project.

The gist of the communication was that she, Caroline Bancroft, constituted
"The Tabor authority of the world;" that much of the material
circulated about the Tabor-Baby Doe business was not in the public
domain, but protected by her own copyrights; and that she expected
to receive a large percentage of any receipts achieved by the Moore-Latouche
opera production. The letter contained scarcely veiled threats to
injunct any production on opening night if her terms were not met,
and added that the expenses of a lawsuit would be more than compensated
for by the attendant publicity in sales of her Tabor material.

Moore and Latouche immediately engaged in a furious round of meetings
and correspondence with their lawyers. Moore certainly had had enough
unhappy legal entanglements with his previous operas to be alarmed:
White Wings, his first opera, although completed in 1935,
was not allowed a performance until fourteen years later - 1949, because
of legal complications with the play upon which it was based. Similar
difficulties with its related novel served to deny Giants in the
Earth its proper circulation and in large part can be blamed
for preventing its publication. The award to Giants in the Earth
of the Pulitzer Prize in Music for 1951 had no effect in removing
these legal obstacles.

In dealing with Bancroft's threat, Latouche's tactics were to avoid
any possibility of plagiarism by supporting each of the opera's scenes
and characterizations with actual contemporary newspaper accounts.
Douglas' solution was to drown the troublesome Miss Bancroft in charm.
He wrote assuring her that her fears were groundless, adding, "Mr.
Latouche asks me to send you his regards and to mention that his next
show will be based on a short story of an old friend of yours…who
has spoken very warmly of you to him." The eventual meetings
between Douglas Moore and Miss Bancroft were friendly.

With this peril averted, the work once again went forward. Latouche
continued to disappear for long periods of time, leaving the frustrated
composer to work alone, forcing Moore to invent entire scenes and
numbers on his own. Thus, in its completed published form, The
Ballad of Baby Doe includes three arias for which the musician
wrote both words and music, "Augusta's Lament," "The
Willow Song," and "The Letter Song," only the first
of which was revised by Latouche. (Among the Moore papers now in the
Special Collections Division of Butler Library are numerous scenes
and drafts of numbers in the composer's hand, attesting to his contribution
to the libretto.)

Central City eventually reextended to Moore and Latouche its commission
for the opera. The vocal score was completed in mid-August, 1955,
and scored six months later. In November 1955 Moore could write, "Latouche
and I have decided definitely to call the opera, The Ballad of
Baby Doe. The title has a nice lilt and seems better than just
Baby Doe."

On July 7, 1956, The Ballad of Baby Doe received its premiere
performance in Colorado in a first rate production by the Central
City Opera Association. Emerson Buckley conducted, Hanya Holm directed;
starring roles were cast from the New York opera stage. Baby Doe
was an operatic bonanza. The music world buzzed with talk that out
in Colorado an important new opera had opened-some said the best American
opera ever written. First string reviewers flew out from New York
to see for themselves; their judgments, with few exceptions, were
enthusiastic. The reviewer for the Denver Post heaped upon
the work his highest [sic] praise, and for added laurels personally
attended two rehearsals and three performances. (Douglas wrote, "We
composers do not ordinarily get such careful treatment.")

On August 7, 1956, while preparations were being made for the New
York premiere, John Latouche died without warning. Douglas said, "He
died at the age of thirty-nine--tragic. Suddenly a heart attack and
that was it. It was right after the success of The Ballad of Baby
Doe in Central City. We had a conference down here [at Cutchogue]
and decided it needed some revision and he wrote the new part and
he never heard what I had done with [setting it to music]. He went
back and went up to Vermont and this thing happened. It was a great
loss."

Douglas outlived Latouche by more than a decade, until July 25, 1969,
and had the pleasure of seeing his creation enter that select category
of works referred to as "the standard repertory operas."
Baby Doe received its New York premiere on April 3, 1958,
by the New York City Center Opera Company. There has been a national
tour and hundreds of professional and college performances across
the country. The Ballad of Baby Doe has successfully survived
transplants from the sturdy halls of the opera house to music tent
theatres in-the-round. It was performed in 1961 at Belgrade and the
West Berlin Festival by the Santa Fe Opera Company. It was been the
recipient of honors and awards, among them, the New York Music Critics
Circle Award for 1958. Excerpts from it have been performed on national
television. Its popularity shows no signs of waning.

Thus, if the history of The Ballad of Baby Doe had been marked
with many unhappy episodes, it indeed finally arrived at triumph.